3-5 Sep 2009
Paderborn, Germany
"The Berlin Group: Knowledge, Probability, Interdisciplinarity" International Conference, Paderborn (Germany), September 3-5, 2009 I. Objectives The history of Logical Empiricism has still not been sufficiently investiga ted in its full complexity. The prevailing picture is that this kind of scienti fic philosophy was dominated by the Vienna Circle. In fact, Hans Reichenbach an d the philosophers and scientists of his circle were more than faithful associates of their Vienna friends. The Berlin Group was an equal partner i n the introduction of the scientific philosophy in germanophone countries aro und 1930 and in many respects it went its own way. In particular, the "Society for Empirical / Scientific Philosophy", organized and directed by Reichenbach a nd his friends, was a forum for interdisciplinary reflection on innovative scientific ideas. This conference aims at making an argument in support of this claim. In contrast to the 1991 Hamburg Symposium "Hans Reichenbach and the Berlin Gro up" (which still counts as the only open discussion of the Berlin Group ever he ld) it is not only Reichenbach whom we wish to focus on but also other members of the Group such as Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling, and Carl Hempel. Moreover , we want to portray the Berlin Group as a scientific unity. Other objectives of this conference are to discuss the relatedness of the Berlin Group to the scientific philosophy of the nineteenth century as well as to explore point s of its theoretical divergence with the Vienna Circle. Selected papers read at the conference will be published in a book. The lis t of invited speakers includes: Alexis Bienvenu (Universit Paris 1) Lutz Danneberg (Humboldt-Universitt, Berlin) Jeremy Heis (University of California, Irvine) Andreas Kamlah (Universitt Osnabrck) Eckart Mentzler-Trott (Munich) Flavia Padovani (Universit de Genve) Helmut Pulte (Ruhr-Universitt Bochum) Erich Reck (University of California, Riverside) Dirk Schlimm (McGill University, Montreal) Michael Stltzner (University of South Carolina, Columbia) Christian Thiel (Universitt Erlangen) II. Call for papers There will be five contributed talks (delivered in English or German) at th e conference. We encourage all interested scholars, including graduate studen ts and post-docs, to submit abstracts of not more than 450 words. Presentation s themselves will be 35 to 40 minutes each, with 15 to 10 minutes allowed for discussion. The deadline for submission of abstracts is July 20. A notice of acceptance will be given by August 10. Abstracts should be .doc-, .rtf- or .pdf-format ted and are to be directed via e-mail to the following address: nikolay.milkov@uni-paderborn.de For further information see: http://kw.uni-paderborn.de/institute-einrichtungen/institut-fuer-humanwisse nschaften/philosophie/forschungsprojekt-berliner-gruppe/ humanwissenschaften/philosophie/forschungsprojekt-berliner-gruppe/